The EU Innovation Fund, one of the world’s largest funding programmes for the development of large-scale innovative decarbonisation technologies, has chosen to co-finance Heracles Group’s “Olympus” CO2 capture project.
The “Olympus” project aims at transforming Heracles Group’s plant in Milaki, Evia, into a zero carbon cement plant through the use of innovative carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. This is an investment that will exceed 300 million euros, of which the EU Innovation Fund will grant 124.5 million euros.
Dimitris Chanis, Heracles Group CEO, stated: “With the Olympus project, we make another strategic investment in Greece, with the support of EU’s Innovation Fund, that will drastically reduce our environmental footprint and yield multiple economic and environmental benefits for the country, accelerating its green transition. The implementation of this investment will contribute to both the minimization of the Company’s carbon footprint and the achievement of the decarbonisation and climate neutrality targets set by the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the European Green Deal.”
This transformation project in Milaki is expected to have a capture capacity of 1,000,000 tons of CO2 per year, paving the way for a “net-zero carbon” future for the company and the building materials industry in Greece and Europe at large. In 2029 Heracles Group will market ECOPlanet ZERO cement with zero carbon footprint.
The “Olympus” project is one of the 17 projects selected for funding, among the 139 proposals submitted to the EU Innovation second Fund in 2022 claiming 1.8 billion euros.
